Rep. John Lewis announces he has stage 4 pancreatic cancer

last updated 30 December 2019

Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) revealed on Sunday that he has been diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer.

The 79-year-old civil rights icon said he has been "in some kind of fight — for freedom, equality, basic human rights — for nearly my entire life. I have never faced a fight quite like the one I have now. While I am clear-eyed about my prognosis, doctors have told me that recent medical advances have made this type of cancer treatable in many cases, that treatment options are no longer as debilitating as they once were, and that I have a fighting chance."

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As a leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, Lewis participated in several civil rights protests during the 1960s, and police officers fractured his skull after he marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. He received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011 from former President Barack Obama, who tweeted on Sunday: "If there's one thing I love about [Lewis], it's his incomparable will to fight. I know he's got a lot more of that left in him. Praying for you, my friend."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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